The restaurant, now open for business, has a clubby look, with stuffed banquettes, white tablecloths and dark colors throughout. Modern art and cookbooks line the walls, a precursor of Cantu’s academic approach to cooking. For example, a night’s menu might yield such dishes as nixtamalized corn and rice “chips” with fermented pepper puree (ahem, “chips and salsa”) and a braised/smoked beef tongue with winter greens and horseradish.

We spoke to Cantu prior to the opening about his new restaurant, that name, the state of modern Mexican cuisine in America, and more.

Our interview follows:

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The exterior. Photo: @californiossf

PL: In the past, we spoke about how you’ve studied history, both food- and non-food-related, and let it influence your food. What’s an example of how that process happens?

The Ice Cup. When I started really researching Mexican cuisine, I was going through all these old cookbooks, whatever I could get a hold of. I was just reading all the recipes, not like necessarily to learn or do what they were doing, but to get an idea.

There was one recipe for Bloody Ice. That’s what it was titled. It was a recipe for sangria, basically. It was the first written recipe of sangria in English. The book was from 1920. The first written word for the etymology of sangria is like 1934 or something like that. So it predates the history of the word “sangria” in English. I thought that was cool. And it’s also called Bloody Ice, which is kind of fun, you know?

How did that translate to 2015?

The first time I did it was a frozen rosé Champagne granita, and underneath we do a really nice sour pudding, some really small-dice fruit and unflavored Pop Rocks. We cover it all in granita.

It’s just a really nice way to start a meal. It’s a palate cleanser. It gets you ready for the meal. Of course we’re not going to say it has Pop Rocks in it; that little touch grabs your attention. Suddenly you come off the street. You’re in this strange space, and you have this course — and now you’re eating Pop Rocks, and suddenly I’ve got your attention. Your mind is not on work so much.

For something like that, there’s that neat little Bloody Ice history, and other dishes might have similar contexts. How do you convey that to the guest? Do you need to?

I don’t know that it’s always necessary. We definitely wouldn’t go into that much detail in person. It’s almost more fun.

I think with fine dining, you get too much interruption as it is. Someone ‘s pouring water. Someone’s pulling your seat. Hopefully it will come through that there’s a lot of depth of thought in everything that we do. And if somebody asks, there will be an answer — and usually a multi-layered answer.

A plated salad dubbed “The Fruit Cup” Photo: @californiossf

What are the challenges of going from pop-ups to a brick-and-mortar restaurant?

God, I don’t know. Pop-ups are pretty complicated [laughs].

I’m just so happy to be here. Popping up is really hard. To have a home for everything, to be in a space that’s a reflection of ourselves, the cuisine. To have plateware that matches, and the aesthetic that I want to develop. There’s nothing that’s negative about moving from a pop-up to this.

So beyond the obvious of building a successful business, what are your goals? Where do you want to be three months from now? Six months, a year?

Three months from now, I want to be operating really smoothly and be really busy. Like you said, it’s a business. We’d love to be completely full every single night.

Long-term goal, I’d love to develop the cuisine even more. A modern Mexican cuisine — or whatever you want to call it — is still relatively new. I think I’ve only just begun to get into it. Hopefully a year from now, it’ll be more developed, more interesting. I hope people will respond to it.

Taco Maria in Costa Mesa. He’s doing some really interesting Mexican cuisine. Carlos Salgado is his name; he was the chef de cuisine at Commis. In New York, Cosme just opened, and there’s the Stupak empire. Of course Chicago has Topolobampo and Rick Bayless.

I don’t know. There are not that many people doing it here. In Mexico, there’s a bunch.

What do you want to bring to that conversation in America?

I think what I can offer to Mexican cuisine is a totally unique perspective on it. I’m not going to lean so hard on tradition. Of course we want to take the flavors and the ideas of the traditional cuisine, but I want to create something totally new. And to continue to create completely new things that are more of a reflection of myself and my perspective on Mexican cuisine, rather than relying so hard on tradition.

You know, the fun thing about San Francisco is that it was part of Mexico at one point. This area was known for having a relatively forward-thinking Mexican cuisine in the 1800s because there were a lot of really rich rancheros. They were receiving a lot of influence from the immigrants coming from France and Italy. They were already incorporating those ingredients and those techniques into their cuisine, which I think is pretty remarkable — and it is a totally unknown story.

And that leads us into the name, right?

Californios is what the Mexican people of this area called themselves. They were people who left Mexico to find something, and do something special. They came here because they thought it was such a great place. I thought that was a pretty accurate description of what we’re trying to do now.

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Californios: 3115 22nd Street, between Mission and South Van Ness, San Francisco. (415) 757-0994 or californiossf.com. Open Tuesday through Friday from 5:30pm to 10pm; until 10:30pm on Saturday